


play it cool, boy

by acronymed



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, M/M, also jean/marco is going to RUIN MY LIFE UGH, chapter 51 spoilers, friendship feels, i can't tell if i otp or brotp these two, the adventures of potato girl and horse face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:06:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acronymed/pseuds/acronymed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean dreams of Marco, of ash and blood, of a boy who never got the chance to use his gear, and asks Sasha for a favour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	play it cool, boy

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to some aggressive sass in chapter 51, i now ship yet another ship in this stupid fandom. snk is actually going to ruin my life. also this is more like sasha/jean friendship with a lot of jean/marco angst because my otp gives me otpain.

Connie gets to the cabin on a Thursday, his eyes red, the hollows beneath them sinking deep into his face. No one asks, mostly because Hanji stares Eren down when he opens his mouth, and Connie refuses to speak.

That night, Jean dreams.

"It's been two weeks," he mutters, into his knees. They're sitting amidst the rubble of Trost. He can't look at Marco; this is one of  _those_  dreams, where half his face is missing, his right shoulder sheared off, blood pouring out until there's a pool of it around them. "Why is this happening now?"

"Maybe," Marco gurgles, and Jean's nails bite into his shins through his pants. He hates this dream,  _shit_ — "Maybe it's because of what happened with Mikasa?"

And now Jean is thinking of her held tight in that Titan's grasp, his brain whirring through possibilities and freezing at the image of Marco smiling and leading a Titan away, of Marco crumpled against a building, of Marco's bones turning to ash in his palms. He's thinking about how he'd saved Mikasa, but hadn't been able to dodge while on his _horse_ , for fuck sake's. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Marco's palm slides up his shoulder blade and curls against the side of his neck, warm this time. Jean risks it, finally looks up braced for a nightmare. Marco's whole, with those freckles across the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth curling gently. "Jean."

He gets it, he does; Marco had been helpless, just like Jean had been on that horse. They aren't soldiers without their gear, he thinks, they're just food. He wants to be better than that. He wants to be dangerous no matter what. "I need to be stronger."

"Okay," Marco laughs, "so do something about it."

Jean inhales, the taste of ash in his mouth, and wakes up.

#

The first thing Connie says to anyone, three days after he's arrived, is, "Sasha, I heard about what you did."

Sasha, elbow deep in warm, soapy water, freezes. Her fingers skim the edge of the plate she's scrubbing, and it falls back into the sink. "What I did?"

Mikasa is cutting wood again (and probably doing sit-ups because she's a lunatic — hotter than the sun, yeah, but also a lunatic) and Corporal Levi has dragged Eren and Armin upstairs to clean out the attic, the last room in the house. Connie is drying the dishes Sasha doesn't try to juggle — seriously, how had this girl made the top ten, she was such a klutz — and Jean is pretending he hasn't been waking up gasping for air every night since they got here by sweeping. He's so tired his hands start to shake sometimes; Marco apologizes for keeping him up every time he dreams about him now.

"With the Titan," Connie says, his voice flat. "You know, the one you axed in the back of the head and then blinded with a bow and arrow?"

Jean pauses. Sasha drops something else. "How do you even know about that?"

Connie shrugs, neatly catching the ceramic bowl on its way to the floor and wiping it down. He's been so expressionless the past few days he reminds Jean of An— no, he isn't going to think of her. "Your dad was telling anyone who would listen. It made its way through a couple of squads."

Sasha groans. "That old man..."

Jean leans his hip against the counter and squints down at her, broom tucked under his arm. "I have a hard time believing that considering the last time I saw you near a Titan you _apologized_ to it."

"That was  _one time_ ," she shrills, throwing water at him. "Stupid horse face—"

"My face is  _perfection_ , potato girl—"

"That was also  _one time_ —"

"Sasha," Connie cuts in, with a quirk to his lips which eases some of the tension in Jean's shoulders, "I didn't even know you could use a bow."

"I can't," she grumbles, and tips her chin so she's staring into the sink, "barely, I mean. It took me a few tries to shoot it in the eye. Then I only had one arrow left so I, uh—"

Connie grins. "Charged at it like a bull and stabbed it in the eye yourself, right?"

"I am going to  _kill_  that senile old—"

Jean blinks once, twice, glances down at his shaking hands while they talk, Connie smiling a little now, a brightness back in his eyes that wasn't there before. Thinks of his dreams, where he sat in flames and thought  _I need to be stronger_  over and over.

Says, "hey, can you teach me?"

#

"She can show you how to shoot," Marco says, thirteen this time with a bandage around his palm. Jean remembers him looking like this just after they'd done their first simulation run — he'd been careless and nearly flung himself into a tree, too occupied trying to show Eren up to actually pay attention. Marco had grabbed him by the collar and sliced his hand open on a tree branch as he swung them both back on course. There's a smudge of dirt at his temple. "She can't show you how to be brave, though."

Jean skips another stone across the lake, grumbles, "thanks, asshole."

Marco laughs, turns his face to the sun and closes his eyes. Jean desperately wants to reach out and touch him, but every time he's tried before Marco turns to dust and he ends up back in Trost. "I'm not saying you aren't. I'm just saying — it's different, you know, not having your gear and taking on a Titan. There's no security blanket."

Jean swallows hard —  _Marco never even got to use his gear_  — and shrugs. "If potato girl can do it, so can I."

Marco snorts. "Jean, that was one time."

"So she says."

There's an ache in his chest when he throws the next stone. It doesn't skip at all, just sinks into the water, one giant ripple fading into nothing.

#

"I don't really know how to start."

"Wow," Jean deadpans, arms folded while Sasha fiddles with some arrows. "Way to inspire confidence there, Braus."

"Laugh it up, pony," she grumbles, brushing dirt off her knees. Jean grinds his teeth, remembering Mikasa daring him with her eyes to give Sasha a hard time. "Okay, done. Hold this."

She hands him a bow, then stares at him for a long beat. Jean rolls his eyes. "Willing me to learn with your mind isn't going to work."

Sasha sniffs. "I know; I can only use my psychic abilities on people with brains, unfortunately."

Jean doesn't even know how to respond so he just makes a series of frustrated noises and glares at her for the next five minutes. They're behind the cabin, facing the woods. It's early afternoon — Armin had offered to take over their chores so Sasha could teach him, and Mikasa had helped once she'd heard what they were doing with a strange, knowing half-smile in his direction. Sasha's set up a line of empty cans along the top of the supply crates. There are a few hastily made targets pinned to the trees nearby. He can tell which ones Eren made because they're all of Jean's face. Little shit.

"Okay," suddenly she's right next to him, sliding her fingers along the bow, her eyebrows furrowed together, "your hands have to go here and here."

He repositions his hands accordingly. Sasha huffs. "No, not like that. Here let me—"

"You are so grabby—"

"It's not my fault you can't follow basic direction!"

"Yeah, 'here and here' is pretty basic. It's also  _really fucking vague_ —"

"Dudes," Connie says from behind them, making them both jump, "Corporal Levi says if you don't shut up he's going to make both of you weed the whole forest."

"I feel that," Sasha says, after Connie's gone back into the house, "as someone who turned Eren into a house wife, we should take him seriously."

Jean sneers. "Well,  _no shit."_

She throws dirt at his head and they call it a day.

#

" _Jean,_ " Marco sounds painfully exasperated, "you realize you actually have to get along with her for her to teach you anything, right?"

"Yes," Jean mutters, hanging in his 3D manoeuvre gear. It's their first day of basic training. He prefers these dreams to the ones where Marco is in pieces.

Marco raises his eyebrows at him. "Are you pouting?"

_"No."_

Marco sighs. "Be nice. Sasha's doing you a favour."

"Ugh," Jean makes a face, feeling very much twelve again, "don't remind me."

He doesn't catch Marco's reply — he loses his balance, tips forward, and just as his head cracks against the ground (wait, hadn't that happened to Eren — oh god is that little fucker going to show up in his dreams oh  _hell_  no—) he wakes up.

#

Sasha looks surprised to see him out back again the next day. "Oh. You came back."

Jean raises an eyebrow. "And you're... here waiting for me?"

"No!" She squeaks, whirling around. "Okay, maybe. I mean. Uh. Mikasa asked me to try again."

Jeans blinks at her slowly. "Mikasa?"

"Please do not swoon," she says, in the exact same voice Marco used to say his name in when he got into pointless fights; almost pleading, mostly amused. "I do not need to see that."

Jean rolls his eyes and steps up next to her. He'd never realized how short she was. "Shut up and teach me already. Properly this time."

Sasha looks up at him, annoyed. "Well, when you ask so nicely."

But she shoves the bow at him, anyways.

(Later, his fingers are blistered and they're both riled up — he's not used to not being good at things right off the bat, and the more he fails the more he snaps at her. He feels bad; it's not her fault, she's doing the best she can, it just bothers him more than it should when he watches her exhale one long breath and shoot the target of his face dead in the eye like it's so easy, like she could survive anything—

_Marco couldn't survive anything, why didn't you show him how to do this, huh? Why didn't they show us how to fight like civilians, not like soldiers; why didn't they show us how to fight—_

There must be something in his face though, something besides anger, because just before they reach the front door she puts her hand on his arm and says, "ya did really good for yer first time, ya know?" in a voice that seems to suit her more than the one he hears, and when he looks at her she tenses all over, turns bright red, and runs into the house.

"What did you do?" Levi deadpans, glancing up from a set of plans. At his other side, Mikasa cocks her head curiously and looks at him like she's just solved a puzzle.

"Nothing," Jean nearly growls, stomping up the stairs.

He doesn't dream that night.)


End file.
